Spellsinger is a cancelled arcade brawler which was in development in 1992 at Art & Magic, a belgian software house. As we can see from the video below, the game was clearly inspired by beat’em up titles such as Golden Axe. Sadly, according to one of the programmers that worked on the coin-op, Franck Sauer, the project was shelved because after three years of delay it became technically obsolete:
Unfortunately, as the game was progessing slowly because of a series of unanticipated difficulties, we had to pause the development several times to work on alternative, commercial-friendly games to keep cash flowing into the company. Ultimately, the project was canned because all of our resources were canibalized by those smaller ‘side’ projects. In the end the game had so much delay that it was rendered obsolete after about three years in the making.
From what we know the game’s source code is also lost forever:
Spellsinger is the only project we’ve worked on for which (to this day) almost every source asset has been lost. There are a couple of backup tapes and floppies here and there, but for now I have not been able to restore the majority of the data. The full prototype Roms and Board seem to have disapeared when the remains of Art & Magic moved along with Deltatec to a new building around 1996.
As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, we are trying to find the best way to have a new U64 Forum without the main problems that the old forum had, especially to have it on the same server as the main website and the risk to lose all the discussions (as it happened when we had to delete the old forums) . We collected all your feedback and even if there are some concerns about using Facebook Groups as a community forum, there are some nice features that are super useful for us and we’d like to do a test to see how it will goes.
So we created the Unseen 64 Community Forum with FB Group group, to work together to search for beta and cancelled videogames, to discuss about them and to get in contact with other unseen games fans. You are free to join and post new discussions, ask for help to other unseen games fans to find and share more info, screens and videos.. what we’ll be able to achieve? If this test will be successful, this group could be the new official U64 Forum! We are waiting for you :)
Space Jelly, also known as Moon Jelly (and originally called “A Fist Full of Credits”), is a cancelled game that was in development for the Nintendo 64 by Software Creations. The game’s world and settings were created by the Pickford Brothers as an original game concept, with concept arts by Steve Hanson. Initially Space Jelly / Moon Jelly wasn’t really a platform-specific game, it was more about designing a main character, their world, backstory and art style, with the intention of creating a franchise which would lead to a series of games. Ste and John Pickford put together a reference book of characters, art, locations, while Richard Kay (Software Creations managing director) was trying to sell the concept to various publishers, before any actual game development began.
In 1995/1996 the Pickford Brothers left Software Creations and were no longer involved in Space Jelly, but Software Creations continued to work on the game, with Steve Hanson taking over as game designer. With only some concept arts and a design doc, it seems that Software Creations was not able to find a publisher for Space Jelly yet. In 1995 Nintendo of America announced that Software Creations entered in their “Dream Team” and as SC’s knowledge of the N64 hardware became more and more deep (SC also created the sound tools for the N64), they started to work on a Nintendo 64 prototype using the Space Jelly concept, with 3D models done by Deborah Graham. In the gallery below you can see one Space Jelly character, Johnny Forbidden, modeled by Francis O’Brien in his spare time inbetween other Software Creations projects.
Space Jelly became a self-funded Nintendo 64 project, a 3D platformer / action game, with ingame graphics tailored to the strengths / weaknesses of the N64 hardware. As we can read from the comments by journalists that saw a video of Space Jelly when Software Creations was showing it at gaming expos, the graphics were great, like a colorful Tim Burton game, with animations done by ex Cosgrove Hall staff.
Sadly Space Jelly was later cancelled, along with many others Software Creations projects for the N64, as Forever Dragonz, Dead Ahead,Blade & Barrel and Creator. Even with various teams full of talented people, probably Software Creations at that time had too many original prototypes in development and they had to cut some of them to switch resources to those project that had more chances to be profitable. In the end, the only games developed by Software Creations that were released on the Nintendo 64 were Carmageddon, FIFA 99, Hexen, World Cup 98 and a couple of Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey: all their more interesting and original games were never released.
Thanks to Francis O’Brien and Ste Pickford for their contributions! Thanks to Celine for some of the scans!
Pinkie is a 2D platform game developed by Data Design Systems and published for Amiga in 1995. It seems that a port of this game was in development for the Super Nintendo but never completed for various reasons. Thanks to an anonymous contributor a playable version of Pinkie SNES was leaked and can now be preserved.
This is a developer build and has various debugging features turned on, such as the controller Select button will allow you teleport the character anywhere in a level and the map screen automatically unlocks the next level without you needing to complete the previous level. There’s lots of other bits in there as well – along with various parts that are completely broken such as the level exit effect which will cause the game to lose frames and never properly recover.
It works on the current batch of SNES emulators if you want to take a look.
Contra Spirits 64 is a cancelled shooter / action game in the contra series that was in development by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka for the Nintendo 64. There are just a few info about this unreleased project as Konami never shown any official screenshot or concept art, but the title was in many list of games to be released for the N64 and the hopes went up for many Nintendo gamers that wanted a new and fun game for their 64bit console. Unfortunatly it seems that as the Nintendo 64 sold poorly in Japan, Konami decided to stop the development of the project and disbanded its team.
Contra was planned, but the original team was disbanded and all team members now work on different projects,” said a company spokesperson. [Contra] has pretty much been shelved. […] There is concern over the poor N64 console sales in Japan […]
Contra 64 would have been a sidescrolling 3D game, with some sessions in which the camera would have switched angles or move behind the characters, possible for boss battles. There are some rumors that say that the Contra Spirits 64 concept was resurrected and became Contra: Shattered Soldier for PS2, but as Contra N64 was in development in 1998 and Contra PS2 was announced and released in 2002, it’s hard to say if the 2 project have anything in common.
Below you can see some scans from old magazines that wrote about Contra Spirits 64 (if you have Next Generation Issue 29, Volume 3 May 1997 and can make a bigger scan of their N64 article, please let us know!).
Thanks to Celine and Contrapedia for the contributions!
This website uses cookies to improve your experience, by continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to the use of cookies. Find out more about cookies.Hide
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
